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POST-OFFICE APPEOPEIATION BILL. 



SPEECH: 

OF 

Wm. MARCUS A. SMITH, 

OF ARIZONA, 

IN THE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
Wednesday, MAr.cn 16, 1898. 



"W^SHINGrXON". 

1898. 

S .V- .S . 



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SPEECH 

OF 

HON. MA EC US A, SMITH. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and 
having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9008) making appropriations for 
the service of the Post-Office Department for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
ISOO— 

Mr. SMITH of Arizona said: 

Mr. Chairman: As general debate on this bill has taken th© 
nsnal wide range, and thus given opportunity to many elociuent 
gentlemen to paint in living colors the unfortunate condition sur- 
rounding the people of Cuba, I deem it not inopportune to call the 
^ attention of this House and the country to the cruel and inhuman 
treatment which the Territories of the United States are receiving 
at the hands of the General Government. At the outset permit 
me to assert that there is no community or people on the face of 
the earth who feel a deeper sympathy with the suffering people of 
Cuba or greater indignation at the brutality of Spain than the 
unrepresented citizens of our Western Territories. "A fellow- 
feeling makes us wondrous kind." 

Having felt the hand of oppression, we keenly feel the necessity 
of freedom. Having suffered from injustice, we actually hate it 
wherever we chance to see it. On account of what we have in 
our own persons felt, I do not hesitate to declare that the sincerest 
lovers of liberty, the most impersonal patriots on our soil to-day, 
are the people of Arizona. They are no strangers to republican 
form of government, yet one might conclude they were if their 
history were written only in the proceedings of Congress and its 
committees. 

Descendants of Revolutionary heroes are there. Veterans of the 
triumphant army of the North in the late great v/ar and their 
3337 3 



children are tliere. Those who followed with courage the con- 
quered banner till all save life and honor were lost are there. Of 
these and such as these is the matchless citizenship of Arizona 
composed, and far across the rolling plains and steepled cities 
and lofty mountain tops they stretch a congratulatory hand to 
everyone here who has had the humanity, courage, and patriot- 
ism to express a sentiment in favor of the freedom of Cuba peace- 
fully if possible, biit at the cannon's mouth if necessary. 

But, Mr. Chairman, we have not listened with patience to your 
proposal to annex Hawaii, with its mongrel citizenship and sugar- 
trust domination, while Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, 
with more than half a million of American freeborn, yet en- 
slaved, citizens are taxed without representation, denied even the 
right of local self-government, and, above all, denied their consti- 
tutional right to statehood. Against this we have iH'otested, and 
still protest. Unavailing this protest will continue to be until 
other and juster men shall take your places here and fill other 
higher places now held by the enemies of our cause. 

Twice have I passed a bill admitting Arizona to statehood 
through this House when the Democrats had control. My prede- 
cessor, with all the industry of his nature, aided by every inge- 
nuity his mind or imagination could summon, barely got a state- 
hood bill out of committee in a Republican House, and never got 
and never could get even a hope of its consideration in the House. 
He did as well and as much as any man could have done with 
Buch a House. He did as well as I have been enabled to do with 
the present House, or as any man could do with it. The truth is 
that the goldbug Republican party is opposed to the admission of 
any other Western State, and as long as it reigns Arizona will be 
left as it is, no matter who shall be sent here as Delegate. You 
know this as well as I do. 

The Committee on Territories by a strict party vote early in 
the present session denied us statehood. Every Democrat pres- 
ent voted for statehood. Every Republican present voted against 
statehood. 

When there was no longer a chance for victory on this line I 
began to press my bill for home rule in Arizona, and it met ex- 
actly the same fate. That was simply a bill to grant to Arizona 
3357 



the poor right to elect certain officers named therein by vote of 
the people instead of having strangers, carpetbaggers, and in- 
competents thrust on us by any President of the United States or 
any of his advisers. 

No point was ever made against this bill in committee or else- 
where that entitles itself to decent consideration. No objection 
was ever urged higher than the miserable idea of giving office to 
some political striker or ward heeler. I do not mean here to char- 
acterize our present officers in Arizona as such heelers, but the 
principle is the same, and one thing is certain, the one holding 
now the highest office, that of governor, used every argument and 
exhausted his energy in trying to defeat the home-rule bill in 
favor of the passage of which every single county in Arizona is 
almost unanimous. 

Nobody opposed it except some meritless beneficiary of the pres- 
ent outrageous system. The people of Arizona wanted to elect 
their own officers. The Republican committee of this House 
wanted to retain Republican incumbents. The Republican in- 
ciambents wanted to stay in. They feared the people, and well 
they might and well they may when they or any of them come 
begging suffrage who have against their record this selfish fight 
on the just powers of the people. 

I have just come from the Committee on Territories, where I 
have been pleading for the simple right to elect by vote of the 
people the men who administer our Territorial affairs. These men 
have no Federal functions; they have nothing to do with the ad- 
ministration of Federal questions. The function of . these offices 
are purely Territorial, and the Federal Government has no right 
and no business to appoint or interfere in any way with them. 

Mr. Chairman, we have begged, we have importuned, we have 
petitioned for this poor boon, but we have been put off unanswered, 
our importunities have been unheeded, and we, as our fathers of 
old with their petitions, " have been spurned with contempt from 
the foot of this throne." 

Talk about independence! Is there any free country on earth 
where this would be tolerated, or any freeman on earth who 
would justify it? Any high-bred freeman who could look with- 
out complaint on such injustice as this would kick himself in 

3357 



6 

every waking hour and deserves the nightmare in every hour of 
sleep. 

Prate here on other questions ahout patriotism, justice, and 
humanity if you -will, but how can you justify this thing? No 
place this side of Hussia, no man worthy to be a citizen of any 
country freer than Russia, can or will even attempt to justify a 
vote against home rule for Arizona. 

Nothing but politics, mean, contemptible politics, has beaten 
the home-rule bill for Arizona, and politics of no better type has 
kept us out of the Union. The country has divided on a great 
financial question, and because we would not bow down at the 
foot of Baal's idols we were told to stay out of the Union. [Ap- 
plause.] Well, we will stay out vmtil that question is settled, and 
settled right. I know and you know that you will not admit a 
State that you can not control in favor of the single gold standard. 
Our people are for free silver. 

They are right. They can not be cajoled, boiight, or bulldozed 
into change of principle. They are not of the knee- bending habit, 
that fawning may bring thrift. We know you will not let us have 
two silver votes in the Senate as long as j^ou Republicans are in 
power, but can you not, just out of the abundance of your sweet 
mercy, let us have a little taste of that " autonomy " you are talk- 
ing of giving to Cuba? [Laughter.] Justice as well as charity 
should begin at home. Let it not for a minute be inferred that 
our people are against Cuba. 

They glory in the valor of the insurgents and long to see freedom 
and victory at once perch upon the banner their valor has carried 
through famine, fire, and battle charge. 

The heroic fortitude exhibited chains our admiration, and the 
insurgents' course would be fully justified if Spain had treated her 
a whit less ungratefully or with a whit more of wrong than the 
Federal Government persists in visiting on its Territories. 

Mr. KING. The gentleman forgets that a good many home 
patriots need office in the Territories. 

Mr. SMITH of Arizona. That is the whole trouble, as the gen- 
tleman from Utah well knows, having seen it at work in his own 
State before its admission. 

3357 



Mr, Chairman, I know full well the struggle parties make for 
political supremacy. I appreciate a political party's unwilling- 
ness, even by just and ijroper measures, to advance the prospects 
of their political adversaries. The country has divided SG[uarely 
on the money question. The East mistrusts the West. Under no 
promise, even if it should ho made, would the Western silver Ter- 
ritories be admitted as States while this (luestiou remains unset- 
tled and the Republicans hold this House. 

But these considerations do not enter into the home-rule ques- 
tion. You could give us this without hurting your gold scheme 
or affecting the result of any Congressional or Presidential elec- 
tion. You could let us pay and distribute our own taxes through 
engines of our own creation without injury to your party any- 
where on earth. You can not refuse us this natural right with- 
out forgetting every sense of human liberty, every idea of legal 
justice, every aspiration of a free soul, and descend to grovel in 
unjust espionage and pay a miserable Caesar's tribute to your 
spies out of the hard-earned money of a people who deserve your 
decent consideration and despise your despotism as a just man 
hates wrong. 

o357 



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